Donkey Sanctuary of Canada

"Go to your happy place." Good advice: mine would be the Donkey Sanctuary of Canada on an open day (Sundays and Wednesday, May-October), when visitors can mingle with the rescued donkeys and enjoy companionable time with these lovely critters on a 100-acre farm. On several occasions, I have tried to explain to people what a wonderful place lies hidden on Concession #4 in Puslinch, near Guelph (just off Hwy 6), but I seem to lack the words to express adequately how calming and rejuvenating an experience being near the donkeys really is. This is not simply equine-love that so many women share, rather I feel a deeper, fellow-creature empathy for these lovely fuzzy animals every time I visit. And the donkeys that have been rescued (some find the sanctuary when their loving owners can no longer care for them and have nowhere else to put them) have such heart-wrenching stories of pasts filled with loneliness, neglect, and even abuse, that you can't help but feel the waves of compassion for these beautiful beasts that emanate from the place and from all the people involved in making this sanctuary a reality. I am gushing, and you must think I am using superlatives to describe this place, but maybe the pictures will convince you to visit and absorb the calm (don't we all need a little calm in our hectic 21st-century Southern Ontario lives?) and get a little country air while supporting such a worthwhile charity.

Peter (front) and Katy (back), never apart for more than a moment; true love for these donkey-spouses.

Earl Grey shows perfect donkey colouring, and he adores mingling with the guests in the barnyard.

Donkeschoen (love that moniker!), peeking behind a tree, seeking the shade, is a very large donkey: the friendly, people-enjoying donkeys in the barnyard always move so slowly & peacefully that the large ones are not intimidating at all.

Donkeys and mules and hinnies love their dust baths; of course, every time I tried to snap a photo, this one would stop rolling around. They are remarkably agile for such substantial creatures.

Close-cropping the grass while they wait for their regular meal. They like to eat the sweet grasses found in Southern Ontario, but they get fat on those green, sweet blades and leaves, so the sanctuary tries to keep them on more of a natural desert diet of hay and dried straw.

A mule who stopped rolling in the dust just as I snapped the shutter, of course. You can still see the dust wafting away in the breeze. Mules, hinnies, and even donkeys, can be all different colours: the white is pretty striking.

Pansy is one of the sweetest donkeys on the farm (they have +50 equines on site); she was spending a lot of time near the fence, hoping people would help brush her winter coat, which she needs to shed before the summer heat sets in.

Another donkey gets brushed by the adoring children. Snuffling the ground for little nubs of green grass the entire time, but not moving much while getting well-brushed by helpful lil 'uns.

On this day, most of the donkeys has their heads down gobbling up any tiny scrap of green: donkeys have to eat all day in the wild to get enough calories to keep going, something like 30,000 jaw movements each day.

A hinny gets a little snippy with a mule in the mule-pasture. A hinny is a domestic equine hybrid that is the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey (called a jenny); a mule has a mother horse and a father donkey (called a jack).

More mules in their segregated pasture. Mules do not like goats, but donkeys adore goats, so the farm's 2 goats have to be careful which paddock they jump into: there was an incident on the day we were there, and one of the goats was roughed up by the mules after leaping into their yard (luckily I didn't see it, just heard about it).

Summer is 42 years old. She is standing at the door to the barn because it is her usual mealtime. However, it's an open day, and she'll have to wait until the visitors clear out.

She is not pleased at having to wait for her supper. She is so elderly that her winter fur does not shed naturally and must be clipped in late spring so that she does not overheat and get too itchy in the summertime.

Donkeschoen again, one of my favourites that day: donkeys' ears are very expressive -- this posture means, you're doing it right, keep scratching right there. When they really like a particular caress, their bottom lip droops, which we got to see often on this day, and I think you can even notice it a little bit in this photo.

Donkeys are my favourite equines (although zebras and horses and hybrids are all pretty cool too). I hope that some of these pictures encourage you to seek out an afternoon of remarkable peace and animal-friendship at the Donkey Sanctuary of Canada (tips for visiting in this pdf file). Seeing these photos makes me want to go all over again, even though this latest trip was just this past Wednesday.